


Hope: the Finite and the Infinite

by timetobedonenow



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Marriage, Past Han/Qi'ra, Post canon, Pregnant Leia, Solo Movie Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 14:46:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14896545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetobedonenow/pseuds/timetobedonenow
Summary: She can’t help the soft smile as they hurtle along at light speed, racing toward the capital—toward politicians and deceit and power-hungry officials who want peace, but more than that wanteverything.  None of it feels good, but she has something to come home to now, and if nothing else, this little trinket reminds her of that.“It’s nothing





	Hope: the Finite and the Infinite

**Author's Note:**

> For my love, gingerthepopcorn who waited patiently for me to see Solo, and then let me ramble my way through all my complicated thoughts and random fanfic ideas. Since we have no current promises of sequels, and I needed desperately to know how Leia would understand the significance of the dice, I wrote this.

She’s momentarily distracted by the feel of Han’s hair between her fingers as she grips it. It’s impossibly soft from the sonics, and clean—a rare occurrence but becoming more frequent now that they’ve been planetside for longer than a few days at a time. The ocean just outside their room provides humidity which adds a soft curl to the ends of his locks which seems to steal a decade from his face.

She loves him. He’s a hard man to love—he makes himself hard to love—but she does it in spite of all that. It’s in these moments, intimate and almost desperate, that she can let herself forget what they’ve been through, and how much further they have to go.

Han’s face is rough with a five o’clock shadow, and his teeth are sharp as he nips at the insides of her thighs. But his tongue is warm, wet, licking kisses between her labia, the pressure against her clit so right her eyes roll back in her head and her grip on his hair tightens. He notices, and she can feel the smug grin against her skin as he lowers himself to tongue a kiss to her wet hole. She quivers, she uses the heel of her hand to press his face harder between her legs, desperate for more friction.

Two fingers join his mouth, pressing inside just to the first knuckle, twisting the way she’s learned makes her come undone. She’s coming before she can warn him, and he’s lapping at her until she’s too sensitive and shoves him away.

Before the pregnancy, before the exchange of rings and vows, he was rougher with her. He pushed her to limits she hadn’t discovered yet. Now he simply lays his head against the gentle, four month swell of her abdomen and closed his eyes. His hand plays across her stomach, walking two fingers from one end to the other. She can feel flutters on the inside, but they’re too small to share just yet. She worries, because she’s due on Coruscant in a scant few weeks, and dealing with the newly formed senate could take months if she’s lucky, could take up to the birth if fate is not on her side—and so often it hasn’t been.

She and Han both knew what they were getting into when she accepted her position, when they agreed to settle but not give anything up in spite of the marriage and the baby. But now the thought of her alone in some room giving birth without him there is enough to paralyze her with fear. He won’t come with her, of course. His record was wiped clean thanks to his work against the Empire, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s Han Solo—smuggler, with debts even she can’t fathom, and an entire past she doesn’t quite yet understand.

“You have your thinking frown on,” he says, reaching up with one finger, pressing to the little wrinkle between her brows.

She sighs and bats his hand away, and he shifts over. He’s still hard, and she briefly considers distracting him by kneeling between his legs and taking him into her mouth. Instead she turns on her side and lets their eyes meet. “I leave in a few days.”

“I know.” He reaches up and tugs at a lock of hair, wavy from her braid she finally let out. “And I have to see a man about a pod.”

She rolls her eyes and her sigh comes from deep in her lungs. “What if something goes wrong and you’re not there.” She thinks about touching her stomach, but she knows it’s more than that. It’s the possibility of anything—of everything—going wrong. And she’d been doing so much for so long without him by her side, but now that she doesn’t _need_ to be alone…

“You’ll have Luke with you,” he reminds her.

And yes, that’s a comfort of sorts. He’s far more diplomatic than Han, but is it so wrong for her to want her husband there?

She feels weak and vulnerable, and she wants to confess everything, but she doesn’t think right then she can stand to see his smug mocking smile, and listen to him call her princess, and imply she’s not as strong as she pretends to be. They’ve never truly exchanged an I love you that most married couples have. It’s not their way. And she’s fine with it most days. Perhaps it’s the baby making her feel like this, or maybe it’s something more. It’s impossible to tell, really.

He licks his lips carefully, then touches the side of her face.

“My mother was alone when she gave birth to me and my brother,” she says. “I don’t think it would have changed anything. I don’t think that…that _he_ ,” she will not say his name, not now. She’s not sure when she’ll ever bring herself to now that she knows. “I don’t think that he was capable of it, no matter what Luke said, in the end.”

Han flinches a little in sympathy, and he continues a gentle stroke of fingertips along her jawline.

“I don’t want to be alone like that.”

His face softens. “Will it help if I promise not to go darkside if anything does happen to you?”

She grabs his hand and presses it low on her belly. “He needs you, Han. We both do, but this isn’t…it’s not that. Not all of it. Things are good now, but for how long? There are sympathizers out there—there are people who know who he is. Who I really am…”

“Leia,” he says, and she flinches because he almost never uses her name. “You are who you are, and your biology doesn’t matter. People will understand that.”

She nearly laughs, because she knows that Han, of all people, doesn’t really believe that. And she’s seen enough death and destruction—everyone she ever held dear except those who are still under this roof. Her entire planet. “Han…”

“No just…just listen,” he says, and props himself up. “You’re going to be great, and it won’t take as long as you think. By the time you’re home, I’ll be back. Then I can spend all night fulfilling every weird craving and every pregnant whim you have. Okay? And then he’ll be born, and you’ll still be amazing, and it’s going to be fine.” He leans in and smudges a kiss across her lips, across her temple. “It’s over, Leia.”

She doesn’t really believe that though. “What if it isn’t?” she whispers. “And you’ll be away, and I…”

He stands, naked and still half hard. She wants to protest—wants to shout at him, suddenly and irrationally, because he’s always walking away from her when she needs him most. He disappears from the room and she flops back, debating about whether or not she wants to go after him and force him to face the realization that they might not ever really be safe.

But then he’s back. The bed dips under his knees as he crawls back to her, and he’s got something clutched tight in his right hand. He looks pale, his lips a thin line, eyes hooded. But he also looks determined, and she’s seen that look on him quite a lot in recent times.

“I loved someone once.” His voice is more thoughtful than she’s ever really heard it, and she holds her breath in a way like she’s afraid even the slightest noise will disturb this moment. He lays down next to her, propped up on an elbow. Whatever he has clenched in his fist, he keeps there, using that hand to prop his head up so he can look down at her. His other hand brushes over her naked breasts, more soothing than sexual, then travels down to the bare swell of her belly. “Not as much as I love you, of course.”

She hears a hitch in his breath, like maybe that’s a lie, but she doesn’t say a word.

“I don’t know what life would have been like if she and I had both…” His voice cracks, and he clears it and shakes his head. “Maybe it wasn’t going to be forever. Hell,” he gives a self-deprecating laugh, “I’m still not convinced you’re going to put up with my shit forever. I know I probably wouldn’t be the man I am now, and I can’t help wondering if that man would have been better for you, or worse.”

“Han,” she breathes.

His hand lifts to her cheek, and he tilts her head and gives her a slow, sweet kiss, tongue sliding gently across hers. When he pulls back, she’s quiet again, and he tilts his head to press his forehead to hers. “I don’t have a lot of happy memories, Leia. I don’t have those moments like you—of peace, of comfort, of a life outside of war and fighting, and running. But I had something that got me through.”

He pulls back away from her, and drops the hand holding up his head, and sitting in the center of his palm are two gold dice attached with a chain. Gambling dice—so very like him, and so unobtrusive and plain. Something a child might win from a toy machine. The edges of each cube are worn down to soft rounds from how often they’ve been touched.

The funny thing is, she’s seen these before, hanging in various locations aboard the Falcon, and in his speeder. She never thought twice about it, never realized that even in these years she’s known him, there could possibly be a significance to such a small, useless little trinket.

Though…perhaps not so useless at all.

She doesn’t move to take them, so Han turns her palm open, and he lets them slide off his own hand, and then curls her fingers to close. “If you take these, you won’t have to be afraid.”

She blinks, and almost smiles. “Is that so? I never really took you for a superstitious man, Han.”

He grins back at her, the apples of his cheeks faintly pink as they lift with his smile. “I’m not. But these…” He huffs a breath and shrugs. “They bring you home.” He licks his lips. “I thought she was home once—maybe she was, at the time. But they also brought me to you, and they bring me back to you every time. Once—maybe even twice—could be coincidence. But they bring me to you every time, Leia. They bring me home.”

She wants to blame the baby hormones for the way her eyes instantly go hot and wet, and she has to turn her face away because she trusts Han beyond measure—as much as she can trust anyone these days—but she still hates that feeling of vulnerability and weakness that raw emotions provide. She swallows, and clutches the cheap, old metal to her chest.

“Okay,” she finally whispers.

He flops back down and she turns on her side to place them on the nightstand. He doesn’t let her turn back, instead curling around behind her and tucking her in close. His flaccid between his legs now, the need between them morphing into something else, and she thinks that maybe he’s right. Han orders the lights down, but in the glow of the moon just outside the viewscreen, she can see the dice sitting there like a promise, like a benediction.

She wants to scoff and tell him that he’ll need them more than she does, that if he’s going to talk to the space-scum pod racers and gamblers, he’s going to need all the help he can gets. But she knows she won’t. She knows she’ll tuck them into the pocket of her cloak and reach in there to touch them every time she feels like everything is falling apart around her.

And maybe it won’t feel like that at all. Maybe it’ll be good—maybe it’ll go exactly the way she planned it, and she’ll be home before the month is out. She can’t count on that, though. But she can count on the fact that he’s given her this—that he’s not going to disappear into oblivion the moment they’re parted again, because he’s given her a piece of himself that he gives to absolutely no one.

She wants to ask about this woman. She wants to know the sort of man that he had been before he’d become this. Except she’s a little too afraid. So she takes the little piece of that battered child from Corellia and keeps it close.

*** 

“What’s that?”

Leia glances up at the sound of her brother’s voice, and realizes she’s been twisting the chain between the dice around her fingers. She can’t help the soft smile as they hurtle along at light speed, racing toward the capital—toward politicians and deceit and power-hungry officials who want peace, but more than that want _everything_. None of it feels good, but she has something to come home to now, and if nothing else, this little trinket reminds her of that.

“It’s nothing,” she says eventually, tucking the dice back into her pocket. “Just something Han gave me. To bring back home.”

The smallest smile graces Luke’s face in a way that tells her he gets it. She doesn’t have to say it, because he feels it. He understands. His hand reaches out—his human hand—and it touches the back of hers softly. She turns her fingers to grasp his, and keeps her eyes fixed ahead.

It’s going to be a long while before she feels safe again, the way she felt as a child. And maybe she won’t ever feel that way, but she’ll never, ever lose hope.


End file.
